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Ervarëa
Ervarëa, officially the Ervarëan Republic, is an island country to the north of Antarctica and is (along with Fangrar) part of the Ervarëan Isles. A unitary parliamentary republic, the island covers an area of 1,440,000km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate. With a population of over 151 million, it is the most populous country on the Ervarëan Isles, comprising 95% of its population. It is surrounded by the South Atlantic Ocean and has a dozen overseas territories. The first kingdom to encompass all of the island was founded in 601 AD, although vestiges of civilization have been recorded as far back as 2000 B.C. Prior to its foundation, the island consisted of and was ruled by twelve kingdoms, each of which controlling pieces of lands that often changed through a series of ever-going land conquests. The kingdoms were united under a war on conquest initiated and led by Adenroth, who became the founder of Ervarëa and the first king of the country. One of the kingdoms chose to exempt themselves from the unification and resettled on a neighboring island which they declared an independent nation by the name Fangrar. Following its foundation, Ervarëa experienced periods of relative stability, increasing population, economic growth, scientific advancement, a significant cultural evolution in music, theatre, literature and the arts, a slow trend toward urbanization, and the gradual development of a legal system, interspersed by periods of domestic conflicts and violent power struggles, including several iterations of fracturings and re-unifications. The period after the last re-unification in the late 13th century in particular is known as a golden age in pre-modern Ervareän history. The era was characterized by a hitherto unseen level of peace, stability, prosperity, and progress. Ervarëan culture flourished, further developing its rich tradition in music, literature, theatre, the arts, and with the evolution of classical Ervarëan philosophy, where it became the only culture other than Ancient Greece to independently develop the theory of syllogism. In the field of music, increasing difficulty of transferring the knowledge of performing the ever-growing body of compositions to contemporary musicians spurred the development of an improved musical notation system, leading to the creation of a neumatic notation system by the 15th century that had a limited ability to notate both melody and rhythm, which became the basis of the modern Ervarëan musical notation system, the only notation system other than the Western one to remain in conventional use today. Ervarëa’s scientific progress featured a number of inventions and discoveries, and they developed a notional understanding of scientific inquiry and made early forays into the development of a scientific method by the early 1500s, but never managed to create a workable and complete model unlike the Europeans. This golden age continued into the 16th century before it met an abrupt end by the spread of the bubonic plague and other diseases by European visitors, and then by increasing levels of confrontation with European powers such as the Spanish Empire that attempted to annex Ervarëa in 1576 as a response to Ervarëa threatening to intervene to stop the Atlantic slave trade, resulting in a Spanish-Ervarëan war that lasted over three years. Following a decisive battle that took place on the northern strait of Ervarëa, in which the Ervarëans were able to repel the invading forces, the Spanish gave up all plans on conquering the island. Similar but smaller operations to conquer the country were undertaken by other colonial powers, in particular the United Kingdom and France. The country participated in both the world wars against both the Allies and the Axis, thus creating a three way war, though its involvement was mainly limited to naval engagements and only smaller skirmishes and small scale battles on land. Ervarëa remained officially neutral during most the Cold War and throughout the period focused much on militarization so as to meet the threats of the two blocs. In the Soviet-Ervarëan war that ensued during the final years of the Cold War, which embroiled six hundred thousand Ervarëan military personnel, more than a hundred thousand deaths were inflicted upon the Ervarëan side, in tandem with some 1.9 million military-related civilian deaths from the nuclear bombing of Ervarëa and the complete destruction of the Soviet Northern Fleet and the Soviet Pacific Fleet, making it the deadliest conflict in Ervarëan history. The atomic bombings caused devastation in several major cities and metropolitan areas including the capital, wrecking physical infrastructure and structures as well as razing several cultural landmarks and old towns, and causing social collapse in the affected areas, leading to further demographic decline. The destruction of the Bank of Ervarëa, the Belduryn Stock Exchange, and several major corporate headquarters (resulting in the deaths of many of the country’s top CEOs and senior managers), and major industrial areas triggered a financial crisis and the ensuing multi-year long recession. Today Ervarëa is a developed country with a high standard of living, ranking eighth in Human Development Index, and ranks highly in many international comparisons of national performance, such as quality of life, health, education, economic, and the protection of civil liberties and political rights. With one of the best educational systems in the world, Ervarëa is a leading nation in scientific research and space development. It has the third-largest economy by nominal GDP, and fourth-largest economy in terms of purchasing power parity. It boasts the second largest military expenditure in the world and is a recognized nuclear-weapons state, possessing the third largest stockpile of nuclear weapons. Ervarëa is a great power and a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.